Conscience

-Conscience is the most important thing. You may lose your hope, you may lose your faith, you may lose your bravery, but as long as you don't lose your conscience, you can still go on. Hope can be renewed, faith can be regained, bravery can be rebuild, but conscience-there's only one of it that you can possess.

مقدمه جديده

C'est la nouvelle introduction pour ce blog. Je doit écrire cette introduction nouvelle....

-OK, enough with the broken French. I have to write the introduction anew, as I have noticed that the blog has departed and evolved way too much since I started it around 2009, that is two years ago.

-May prosperity, wisdom and peace be with the author of this glorious blog! And also, may the riches of this world and beautiful girls be attracted to him as well!

"...OK, that's too much, you know perfectly well most beautiful girls aren't into a mental person....."

Of Sacrifice and the Passing Time

-Today marks my 4th time celebrating Eid-ul-Adha far away from my home. Today's celebration was fun, I had a great time together with friends and acquaintances, as well as experiencing the great international experience of celebrating Eid with lots of people from different countries with different cultural background, in a land where most people don't trust organized religions. My fellow Malaysians, Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Turkish.....it is really a different experience here in Japan, and I am going to treasure the experience, regardless of my largely agnostic attitude towards my old faith.

-Well, I don't want to be talking too much about faith, as I am still confused and trying to find my way out in a mature way that's acceptable by me. But still, the sacrifice made by Abraham and his son Ishmael (Christians say it's Isaac, but what the hell, maybe God asked for them both, I don't really care no more), that is a kind of story that makes you think, what sacrifice actually is.

-Is sacrifice made out of necessity really sacrifice? Does being forced to lost or give up something can be really considered a sacrifice? Can one sacrifice another, in the name of any imaginable cause? Does God require sacrifice, or is it really us that require sacrifice? Those are some of the questions that went out in my mind, as I tried in vain to focus on the after-prayer sermon, disturbed by noises of children playing (I really don't get it how children who don't really speak the same language manage to communicate and play together. We adults must have lost something as we grow up).

-Yes, the 4th Eid-ul-Adha in a foreign land also reminds me of the passing time. Of course I am aware of the argument that time doesn't really exist in a physical sense; I am also aware of the argument that the experience of a passing time is merely a side-effect of us organizing our experiences in a sensible order. Yet, in the end, it seems that the conventional idea of time really does work for most of us, most of the time. And I am still subject to my mental depression which enhances my sense of the passing time, and this makes me feel like God is playing games with me, a game called Responsibility and Regrets, in which I am being held responsible for every mistake that I did, and as a result, I feel regrets which are useless, because I don't seem to be able to learn anything from them, nor am I able to move forward in a real way.

-I think I need to stop being nihilistic; it is of no real use to me. Let's just be pessimistic.

Not only does Men be more judgmental than God,

They also assume That God to be as ridiculously judgmental as they are.

Such an act is an insult to the Oneness of God.

There Has To Be A Way

-There has to be a way, a different way to see the world. If the Sufi says that the path to God is as many as the numbers of souls that have lived on this earth, then there must be the same number of ways of viewing this world too.

-Am I right, or am I wrong? I hope I am somewhat correct.

The Jewish God

-In Islam, we have the phrase Alhamdulillah.

-In Christianity, they have the phrase Hallelujah.

-Both are phrases in praise of the Lord God the Only One.

-That's basically it.

Posterity

-Muammar Qadhafi is dead.

-I don't know; my feelings are mixed.

-A part of me feels that this is the sign of a change towards a better, more democratic, more liberal and more open Muslim world, which will be able to accommodate more people, generate more advancements, advance academically and economically as well as being politically more vibrant and stable. There will be a new generation, that will advance without fear, without any post-colonial inferior complex, without any blockade from any other forces, be it external or internal and be able to come into terms with the current worldwide revolution of the way of life.

-Yet another part of me mourns the nostalgia of the old post-independence past of Muslim world; a part of our collective history as a Muslim ummah, in which we were lead by leaders that were autocratic, anti-Western, and maintains their power through some sort of status quo, which differ from countries to countries. The Muslims of that time were pretty resistant to outside influences, due to their strong anti-colonialism, anti-Zionist and nationalistic conviction, that Muslim ummah needed to recreate an identity as a collective whole, an identity any Muslim-be him secular or religious, liberal or conservative, right-wing or left-wing, politically concerned or apolitical, Shiite or Sunni-can proudly identify with. The Muslims at that time were idealistic, and even though there were too many mistakes done and too many bloodshed occurred, at least Muslims were sure, that they want a brighter future as a Muslim ummah.

-The era has come and passed.

-What has remained is the spirit of the Muslims, who demands and seeks continuously, the fulfillment of their spiritual and worldly needs, and the betterment of their states, both secular and religiously.

-Yet we are living in a dangerous world, in which ideals fail you, extremism thrives here and there, prejudices abound, and Messianic fears of the impending Armageddon feeds the ideology of Apocalyptic beliefs both within and outside the Muslim world. Muslims are afraid of non-Muslims, non-Muslims are afraid of Muslims, and fear breeds hatred between both. Plus, the mistakes that both sides have done, the bloodshed, the violence and the lies told have marred the trust between both sides, not to mention among both sides. Humans have developed a complex society that is interlinked together by a single capitalistic economic system as well as a highly advanced communicating system, and the combination of these two systems have in turn provided an impetus for a very rapid change to our human society, that the world doesn't look the same as it used to be as recent as 10 years ago. The effect is that many brilliant systems of the past have largely end up obsolete; and in my honest observation, Islam too, has ended up the same way.

-Hence, in order for Islam to survive, it needs to be reformed. I am not talking about purification of Islam the way the Wahabist faction wants it, I am not talking about the revival of Caliphate as espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood, I am not talking about the Iran-styled Islamic Revolution.

-I am talking of a total CHANGE IN ATTITUDE towards the very core of our faith; QURAN AND SUNNAH. I am talking about CHANGING the INTERPRETATION ALTOGETHER. I am talking about BRAVING OURSELVES TO GO AGAINST THE CLERICAL AUTHORITY, and CHANGING THE STATUS QUO OF THE MUSLIMS. ALTOGETHER.

-This is dangerous talk, I am well aware of that, and I might be missing a lot of vital points too. But the Muslims always wanted a kind of Muslim Renaissance. They need to refer back to the European society. The European advances by adopting a radically different attitude towards the Christian church, resulting in a very big schism in the Christendom. The French Revolution were as bloody as can be; the concepts of democracy was challenged by its antithesis, the communism, the secular people departs from the church, and the culture of the Christian Europe was changed radically, that the current Europe bears little resemblance to the Europe of the Dark Ages.

-I want to say that, in many ways, our current situations mirrors that of the European Dark Age; Heretics are hunted and killed, religiously we're being mind-controlled by the clerics, there's no real religious freedom in a practical sense, the society was afraid of outside influence. We need to change that.

-But this is not easy. In fact, this will be very hard, there's going to be a big turmoil in the Muslim ummah, and the ummah might be split more, if any rash attempts at change are being put into practice.

-But if Muslims really believed in transforming themselves into a better condition, we need to abandon our safe, established ground.

-And yet, many people, too many people are too afraid. They are convinced that the world is at its End, and thus may see any attempt at change as negative, the sign of the Devil, the Zionist (or Freemasonry) plot, the Antichrist plotting his move. These are prophecies; I found it weird that Islam taught us not to believe in prophecies whilst espousing these kind of prophecies. It doesn't sound right, it is contradictory, and it is a blunder. The Muslim ummah is engulfed in some sort of Apocalyptic fear, which does not do us much good.

-To end this post, I would like to say that frankly, I myself am feeling afraid, that Apocalypse is coming near. Apocalypse means the end of the world as we know it; the end of our worldly hopes and desires for a better place in this world. The belief in Apocalypse is some sort of a sign of submission towards a certain Will, that is bigger than all of us, that dictates all of our lives. But let's not be afraid of Apocalypse anymore; we must free ourselves from this fear.

-Muammar Qadhafi is dead. Innalillah wa inna ilaihi rajiun.